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Odd Lots

Presenting Foundering Season 6: The Killing of Bob Lee, Part 1

26 Apr 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.638 - 3.906 Unknown

Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.

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3.926 - 9.118 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

There's going to be two types of companies. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't.

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9.298 - 37.24 Shawn Wen

How do we build a future that is human-centered? I'm Rana El-Khayoubi, and on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives.

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38.842 - 49.782 Shawn Wen

Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.

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52.005 - 60.137 Unknown

Tuesday, April 4, 2023.

60.297 - 70.673 Shawn Wen

It's April 4, 2023. The 911 call comes in at 2.34 in the morning from near downtown San Francisco.

72.756 - 77.851 Unknown

Sir, hello? Hello? The caller sounds stunned.

78.391 - 121.941 Shawn Wen

He doesn't say his name. He just keeps repeating, help, help, until he says, Somebody stabbed me. After a minute or so, the caller starts gasping for breath. The 911 operator tries to get more information out of him, without much luck. Slowly, he starts struggling for energy.

122.502 - 125.027 Unknown

Yeah.

Chapter 2: What happened on the night of Bob Lee's stabbing?

315.087 - 322.076 Stephen Carroll

The Trump administration is also increasing the pressure on Minnesota. Thousands of immigration agents were sent to the Twin Cities.

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322.336 - 328.364 Shawn Wen

Trump administration is deploying an additional 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles.

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328.384 - 335.933 David Sacks

In his effort to deploy the National Guard to cities like Portland and Chicago.

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335.953 - 343.002 Shawn Wen

In the years since Bob Lee's death, President Trump would deploy federal troops to several cities with Democratic leadership.

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343.218 - 350.388 Unknown

I don't like being up here talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful capital was.

351.25 - 370.496 Shawn Wen

He would argue that crime was, quote, out of control and that these cities were burning down, that the streets were in crisis. And for anyone living in San Francisco, this kind of language might sound pretty familiar. The San Francisco doom loop was only the first chapter of how Bob Lee's death was spun.

371.998 - 406.665 Shawn Wen

After that, when details of Bob Lee's personal life started being reported out in the press, a new story started to emerge. Bob was held up as an example of the tech industry's excessive party scene, replete with sex, drugs, and house music. What was the real story? Why was Bob Lee killed? And who really was to blame? The city? The industry? Or something else entirely? I'm Shan Wen.

407.206 - 409.911 Shawn Wen

This is Foundering. The Killing of Bob Lee.

422.902 - 427.35 Stephen Carroll

Hello, I'm Stephen Carroll. I'm in Brussels, where many of Europe's biggest decisions get made.

Chapter 3: Who was Bob Lee and why was his death significant?

871.63 - 874.916 Stephen Carroll

His death certainly sending shockwaves through the tech community here.

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875.417 - 880.246 Caroline Hepke

I was on the phone with my father and I started crying. I'm like, Dad, I got to go. Bob's on the news.

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880.787 - 886.478 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

Police officers rushed out there. But by the time they got there, the killer or killers were long gone.

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888.972 - 900.789 Shawn Wen

The initial wave of news stories are pretty bare bones. They mention Bob's name and the fact that he was killed, but they don't mention a suspect or a weapon. Then the story changes.

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901.63 - 929.846 Shawn Wen

At 8.01 p.m., the night of April 4th, only 18 hours after Bob was stabbed, a retired MMA fighter named Jake Shields goes on Twitter and posts, quote, "'I just found out that my good friend was killed last night while walking in San Francisco.'" He was in the good part of town and appears to have been targeted in a random mugging slash attack. Fuck San Francisco. Nowadays, Jake is a podcast host.

930.587 - 952.481 Shawn Wen

He's interviewed Holocaust deniers and white nationalists. But at the time, he was simply a semi-famous guy on Twitter. Soon, more voices join in, many identifying as venture capitalists and tech founders. We've trimmed these tweets for length. RIP at Crazy Bob. This is fucking horrific. Fuck you, SF politicians. Fuck you.

953.082 - 984.235 Shawn Wen

Can we please stand up and completely purge SF politics now and start over? How many more of these are we going to see? Another one reads, This last tweet was referencing Chesa Boudin, a progressive DA who ran on policies like bail reform and reducing the prison population. He was removed from office after a very contentious recall vote.

986.78 - 1025.046 Shawn Wen

By the time Bob was killed, members of the tech industry had been rallying for months around the message that crime in San Francisco was out of control. And now, one of their own was dead. That's when the richest man in the world chimes in, taking the story to a whole new level of infamy. At 2.27 a.m., Elon Musk tweets, Is the city taking stronger action to incarcerate repeat offenders?

1025.808 - 1050.334 Shawn Wen

At Brooke Jenkins, SF. So I woke up, I remember early in the morning to that tweet already being in my inbox. That's Brooke Jenkins, the current DA of San Francisco. She was appointed after Chesa Boudin was recalled. And me having to, you know, out of the fog of waking up, realize what exactly I was looking at in that tweet.

Chapter 4: How did the tech community react to Bob Lee's murder?

1061.886 - 1066.11 Shawn Wen

I was shocked that he knew my name at all.

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1066.851 - 1078.583 Brooke Jenkins

I think about six million people saw it within 24 hours. And so the flood of media interest began almost right away.

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1079.626 - 1082.589 Unknown

All right, here's a horrible story, then we'll talk about Trump.

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1083.29 - 1089.317 Shawn Wen

The next morning, things move beyond the walls of Twitter when conservative YouTubers take up the story.

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1089.337 - 1098.207 Unknown

Tech executive Bob Lee, founder of Cash App, was stabbed to death in San Francisco on the 300 block of Main Street.

1098.227 - 1100.97 Shawn Wen

This is the late Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert.

1101.211 - 1108.519 Unknown

Now, this caught my attention not only because it was a horrible tragedy, but this is the same block that I was attacked with a knife.

1108.837 - 1119.63 Shawn Wen

Two months before this, Dilbert was dropped by major newspapers all over the country when Adams made racist statements about Black people. He became a YouTuber, commenting on the news of the day.

1120.15 - 1127.178 Unknown

So in the 80s, I was robbed twice at gunpoint while I was a bank teller in downtown San Francisco.

Chapter 5: What misinformation spread during the investigation?

1133.474 - 1143.792 Unknown

I think they're dead. I think the next time the cities will be alive is when robots rebuild them. That could be a while. All right. Let's talk about Trump's arraignment.

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1145.075 - 1148.18 Stephen Carroll

Clearly, what's happening in San Francisco is political.

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1148.561 - 1153.71 Shawn Wen

This is Luke Rutkowski, a prominent 9-11 truther and an Alex Jones acolyte.

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1153.808 - 1165.841 Stephen Carroll

The latest high-profile incident that happened in San Francisco happened where a major tech executive and the founder of Cash App, Bob Lee, was viciously attacked in the middle of the night and then lost his life at the age of 43.

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1166.162 - 1174.03 Shawn Wen

News of Lee's death caught the attention of many commentators, from those on the fringe to those who are increasingly mainstream.

1174.151 - 1179.917 Stephen Carroll

I'm Dave Rubin. This is The Rubin Report. It's April 6, 2023. We're live streaming on Rumble, YouTube, and Locals.

1179.897 - 1185.435 Shawn Wen

Dave Rubin is a conservative YouTuber. His channel has almost 3 million subscribers.

1185.584 - 1205.145 Stephen Carroll

And it's not just that they're pushing all of the gender stuff and the race stuff and that they lied about COVID and everything else. It's that there is also an unbelievable amount of crime happening in blue cities right now. You know it, we cover it all the time. But the worst of the worst, as you guys know, is San Francisco. San Francisco has completely collapsed.

1205.486 - 1214.055 Stephen Carroll

Elon Musk's comments are completely right. The amount of security he has to have at the Twitter offices, which is in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.

Chapter 6: What were the implications of Bob Lee's death for San Francisco?

1342.314 - 1366.191 Shawn Wen

It's more casual, more in your face. In your daily life, on your way to work, on your way to dinner, on the walk to pick up groceries, you might see someone shooting up at the BART station or sitting on the sidewalk with open sores on their legs or having a mental health episode in the middle of traffic. And most longtime San Franciscans would tell you, unfortunately, that's not new.

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1371.881 - 1392.802 Shawn Wen

There's research that shows that worrying about crime can become a chronic emotional state that shapes how people see the world around them. It can sow anxiety and mistrust, even when crime rates are stable or falling. The research also shows that people who worry more about crime also tend to see common nuisances as threatening.

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1392.862 - 1412.252 Shawn Wen

Things like noisy neighbors, litter, graffiti, or just visible groups of teenagers hanging out. To them, these are signs of social decline. Crime during and immediately after COVID was a nationwide conversation. But San Francisco especially was a hot topic.

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1412.755 - 1422.664 Dave Chappelle

Comedian Dave Chappelle was not the usual jokes and giggles during a surprise show last week. Instead, going off about San Francisco's high crime and rampant homelessness.

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1423.032 - 1433.567 Shawn Wen

Bob Lee was killed during a moment when San Francisco had become a national punching bag, based on a reputation that wasn't completely inaccurate.

1433.948 - 1449.63 Caroline Hepke

The comedian asking the audience, quote, what the blank happened to this place? He didn't say blank. Saying the whole city was now the tenderloin as a district notorious for crime, homelessness, drug problems.

1449.61 - 1454.916 Shawn Wen

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew in just to dump on the city for a campaign spot.

1454.936 - 1467.031 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

We're here in the once great city of San Francisco. We came in here and we saw people defecating on the street. We saw people using heroin. We saw people smoking crack cocaine.

1467.531 - 1474.74 David Sacks

And you look around, the city is not vibrant anymore. It's really collapsed because of leftist policies.

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